Rebels wary of foreign force securing MH17 crash site in Ukraine

Donetsk, Ukraine: There has been no formal response from eastern Ukraine rebel separatists to plans for a foreign force, possibly several-hundred strong, to investigate and secure the MH17 crash site. But signals the rebels sent on Friday suggest a reluctance to have more than 20 or 30 foreigners on their turf.

Some possessions of MH17 victims that were originally taken from the crash site have been returned. Photo: AFP

On a day that some looted items – including bank and credit cards and passports – were mysteriously returned to areas of the site where investigators likely would find them, the rebels intimated to European conflict monitors that they wanted the debris to be cleared in a matter of days and without a major foreign presence.

Australia already has flagged the deployment ‘for no more than a few weeks’ of about 180 personnel – comprising 150 members of the Australian Federal Police and perhaps 30 members of the Australian Defense Force. And an additional 150 Australian officials are already in Europe, working remotely on the investigation.

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The Dutch will lead the force with Britain, Germany and Malaysia also expected to send military and or police contingents for a total force that Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte reportedly estimated would number several hundreds.

After another day amidst the wreckage of the Malaysian Airways Boeing 777, an Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe monitoring team, which was accompanied by five Australian officials, reported that the rebels believed they had the necessary heavy-lifting equipment to start hauling the debris to the same railway station from which the bodies of the victims were shipped out of the region on Tuesday.

OSCE spokesman Michael Bociurkiw said: “There wasn’t a sense that they would start moving stuff unilaterally and their thinking was that they might accept help from experts. But it didn’t sound like they wanted a huge crowd – maybe 25 or 35.”

There was a renewed sense of urgency in Mr Bociurkiw's latest report on the crash site – apart from looted items being returned, he said there was further evidence of tampering, in particular with the cockpit section of the aircraft which, he said, had ‘pancaked’ on impact but subsequently had been ‘severely cut into'.

“On Day 2 we saw people in uniform cutting into it with a diesel saw. But today it was quite stark – now it has been opened up,” he said.

A pro-Russian militant stands guard near a piece of debris. Photo: AFP

None of a series of senior leaders responded to Fairfax Media’s requests to discuss foreign plans to secure the site.

Their only acknowledgement was a bald statement in an online news bulletin published by the press office of the Donetsk People’s Republic late on Friday – “the Australian government will dispatch 100 additional policemen and a small number of people from the defense office to form together with the Dutch a group to secure the perimeter of the MH17 crash site.”

The item was No 3 in the bulletin, coming after news of a new dusk to dawn curfew in nearby Horlivka and a Ukranian military assault in which 40 shells hit the the Rostov region.